Okay, someone please explain this to me.

[garote]

A bunch of organizations (banks, investment firms) that deliberately made each other bad loans on bad credit were in danger of having all that illusory money evaporate when the average person could no longer survive under the strain of the real debt at the bottom of the pyramid.

So the government spent 1.5 trillion dollars in economic bailout money, with another 800 billion on the table.

We gave the banks this cash with no requisites on how it was to be spent, so they went and bought other banks, instead of freeing up the credit markets.

So the government just spent, like, four complete years' worth of everyone's taxes, for what? So that these organizations could ACTUALLY GET that illusory money they'd been passing around, and use it to brawl amongst themselves? While the average person, bankrupt, homeless, or starving, receives nothing?

That makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.

They went in front of congress and said, "Waah, we thought the working class was an infinite supply of good debt! But they weren't! But can we have our money anyway"... And the gummint said, "Okay?" And furthermore, "let's all chip in - including the bankrupt middle class - and pay for you to escape?"

What the hell is going on?

The lenders didn't get money out of me from a bad loan - because I was never foolish enough to ask for one - so they take it out of me anyway, through my taxes? Why am I paying for this? Why are ANY of us paying for this?

Seriously; what the hell is going on??

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_ofuda_/]

Fucking signed.

[peace-piper.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

When we were trying to buy a house in NJ, we had a bunch of stuff go wrong (thankfully--otherwise, we'd be stuck with a house worth 80% of our mortgage by now). For last of three houses that we had under contract, the owner just so happened to be a realtor and a loan officer. When a bunch of shite went wrong for us financially and we no longer qualified for the mortgage for which we were pre-approved, the bank AND the seller were offering to do some voodoo where they overstate my income by 400% and use that as basis to rope us into an ARM.

These are the kind of people who are getting bailed out. Not the poor suckers who accept such offers without knowing that they're getting screwed hard.

[graue.livejournal.com]

Tell it, bro. One of my parents' neighbors down the street got foreclosed on and had nowhere to go (he was staying with a friend last I heard). Where's his bailout check?

It's like somewhere along the line, the whole "capitalism" experiment went horribly wrong and turned into socialism for the rich. We could at least have socialism for everyone if we're gonna get socialism either way.

The banks were "too big to fail"? Excuse me while I eat LOTS of ice cream.

[breakpoint.livejournal.com]

No, actually, as near as I can tell the only two flavors of socialism that will actually evolve are "socialism for the rich" or "socialism for the elite".

Look at Kazakhstan under the USSR if you don't believe me. There's a good argument that the USSR was a good example of what "racist socialism" looks like.

Having said that, if you're going to have capitalism, have capitalism. If a company-- even one that employs a double-digit percentage of your population-- fails, let it fucking fail. Let its prior employees start a few dozen new companies, buy up the failed company's patents for pennies on the dollar (or better yet, invalidate them as part of the cost of severe forms of bankruptcy).

Banks are trickier, but the answer may just simply be more, smaller banks and a standardized way of showing customers how risky a bank's investments are. I don't know.

But honestly, having spent most of the last twelve years in startups, and making a living for most of it, but being honest enough to say, "Dude, I can't afford that house, I don't care what you try to tell me," does not give me a whole lot of sympathy to spread around to the bail-me-out crowd-- Detroit, Wall Street, OR Main Street.

This country needs more SMALL businesses, SMALLER unions (and in many cases NO unions), housing markets where buying makes sense because it is cheaper than renting for people with good credit but more expensive than renting for people with bad credit, and razors with reasonably priced disposable blades.

You know what? FUCK IT, I'm running for Congress. That's my fucking platform. More small businesses, unions small enough that they know THEIR town (let alone their members' fucking names), realistic housing prices, and affordable razor blades.

Oh yeah, and fewer people whining in second-level blog comment replies.

When a significant chunk of serious business competition is local, and things change from town to town and state to state, people will vote with their feet, and market forces start to work for the citizens.

[mommadona.livejournal.com]

hell yeah

[conflictdswitch.livejournal.com]

And did you also notice that they're only bailing out banks on the East Coast?

[rudetuesday.livejournal.com]

*groans*

The worst part of all this, beyond the worldwide effect, is that there's nothing subtle about this. This is a huge JACKING, plain and simple. The lenders begging for this money made rules themselves, broke them themselves, and got rewarded for it.

It's not audacity, it's madness. It's not even free market capitalism madness. It's a hard-handed hustle.

[mommadona.livejournal.com]

well i totally agree and i thank the good lord i don't have a mortgage but i'm kinda depressed this hardly affects the prices of houses in san francisco

BUT the gov't thinking, and why the goddamn thing passed, is it was basically necessary to keep the U.S. strong and a dominating world power... which we all agree is important if we don't want our asses kicked by every other country in the world

so it makes sense that we middle class mofos "take one for the team" to keep america strong, to supposedly save us from an even bigger recession... mofos!